One type of removable media container is a purged media container. A purged media container is removably located within a self-service terminal (SST), such as an automated teller machine (ATM), and receives media items (such as banknotes) that are not presented to a customer and/or are presented to a customer but are not removed by that customer.
There are a variety of reasons for media items being sent to a purged media container.
In SSTs that have a spray presenter or a bunch presenter, if multiple media items are picked in a single operation instead of a single media item, then those multiple media items are typically transferred to the purged media container.
In an SST that has a bunch presenter, any error in creating a bunch of media items may lead to the bunch being sent to the purged media container. For example, if insufficient media items are available to create the complete bunch, if there is a temporary power failure during bunch creation, or the like. Furthermore, bunch presenter SSTs may also retract a bunch of media items presented to a customer if that customer does not remove those media items. The retracted media items are transferred to the purged media container.
One problem with purged media containers is that media items are stored in a bulk area, so it is difficult to associate media items with a particular transaction, which makes reconciliation difficult. One type of fraud involves a customer removing some but not all of the media items presented during a transaction. Those media items that were not removed are typically transferred to the purged media container. However, it is difficult to be certain whether all of the media items from a transaction were delivered to the purged media container because there could be multiple media items present because of, for example, multiple media items being picked simultaneously then purged.
It would be desirable to provide an improved purged media container. It would also be desirable to provide a purged media container that obviates or mitigates one or more of the above disadvantages or other disadvantages associated with media containers.